Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Physical therapy+massage+woo=chiropractic

    This is a reprint from my old blog that will provide necessary backgroud for an upcoming story. Thanks for your indulgence.
    Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchI am often asked my opinion of chiropractic care. My usual answer (based on evidence) is that it can be somewhat helpful in the treatment of low back pain. That’s it. Any further claims are complete and utter bullshit. Many chiropractors practice ethically, and recognize the correct scope of their abilities…many do not.

    Adapted from RationalWiki
    Chiropractic is the theory and practice of correction of “vertebral subluxation processes” to treat and cure disease. It was developed in the late 19th century, just before the development of modern medical education in the United States.
    Chiropractors subscribe to the theory of “vertebral subluxation”. This differs from the medical definition considerably. An orthopaedic (real) subluxation is a painful partial dislocation of a vertebral body. A “chiropractic subluxation” is an asymptomatic misalignment or a “vertebral subluxation complex” thought to be a cause of disease. The mechanism posited is usually the blocking of nerve impulses from spinal roots, or some such nonsense. Such a subluxation has never been proven to exist.

    Lest you think that this unproved hypothesis has died away, in July 1996, the Association of Chiropractic Colleges issued a consensus statement that:

    Chiropractic is concerned with the preservation and restoration of health, and focuses particular attention on the subluxation. A subluxation is a complex of functional and/or pathological articular changes that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system function and general health.

    This hypothesis has never been tested, and ignores significant anatomical reality, such as the fact that much of the nervous system does not pass through “subluxations” in any way. This especially applies to the autonomic nervous system that “influences organ system function”.

    According to the American Chiropractic Association:

    The ACA Master Plan, ratified by the House of Delegates in June 1964 (Amended June 1979, June 1989, July 1994 and September 2000), and will govern future policies of ACA as quoted:
    “With regard to the core chiropractic principle, which holds that the relationship between structure and function in the human body is a significant health factor and that such relationships between the spinal column and the nervous system are highly significant because the normal transmission and expression of nerve energy are essential to the restoration and maintenance of health.

    That’s basically a re-statement of subluxation theory without the “s” word. It’s also patent bullshit.

    So the chiropractors haven’t given up the absurd theory behind their “profession”—but does it work despite the poor theory? After all, outcomes are what count.

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  • Open letter to the People of the great state of Florida

    Dear Floridians,

    Greetings, and an early “hello”! I’m heading your way at the end of the week to spend my tourist dollars, and I can’t wait to see you!

    But first, some important business.

    Your representatives in the Florida House have just passed a so-called academic freedom bill. I strongly recommend a deep suspicion on your part regarding this bit of planned government intrusion into your children’s academic future. It is up to you, through your elected Senators, to stop this misguided intrusion of politics into science. It would also be wise to reconsider those who voted “aye” when they come up for re-election. If you fail, the consequences could be more serious than you imagine.

    First, let me give you a brief outsider’s view of some of the goings-on. When your governor, Charlie Crist, was asked if he “believed in” evolution, he responded, “I believe in a lot of things. We should have the freedom to have a good exchange of ideas.”

    As far as I am aware, this great country has always allowed for “good exchange of ideas”. Also, evolution isn’t something one “believes” in. It is a cornerstone of science. If you are not a scientist and don’t know much about it, there is no shame in that. Just admit it and pick up a book (I’d personally start with anything by Stephen Jay Gould). It would be nice to see a state leader stand up and say, “We have always had, and always will have, the freedom to exchange ideas, in and out of school. This is irrelevant to the design of a science curriculum.”

    This bill, which will hopefully die in the Senate, is a sham. It makes a mockery of science, education, and religion. It is simply a way to allow the teaching of religion in the science classroom. Despite the fact that no teachers have filed complaints about evolution education, the bill is designed to protect these non-existent complainants.

    And, as one of your own representatives astutely pointed out:

    Rep. Carl Domino, R-Jupiter, said the bill would lead teachers to present their personal opinions on evolution in the classroom.

    Noting that some people believe the Holocaust never happened or 9/11 was an Israel-hatched plot, Domino said he doesn’t want fringe theories introduced in public schools. “There are a lot of strange things out there that I don’t want teachers teaching,” said Domino, who joined the Democrats in voting against the bill.

    Gee, that’s refreshing. Good for you, Senator Domino, and good for your contituents for electing you.

    I have to tell you quite honestly—from the perspective of someone in a scientific field, the whole issue looks really silly. Science is brutal…theories that cannot hold up to withering scrutiny do not survive, and scientists are always interested in being the one to discover something new, even if that “something new” is the proof that a theory is wrong. Science is self-regulating that way. Scientists don’t need laws to remind them to critique each other. The idea is laughable.

    More personally, as a physician and educator of young physicians, I’d worry about anyone educated in a state where precious time was taken from science classes to teach fairy tales, even popular ones. That’s what social studies is for. I like social studies. I’d feel bad if an aspiring doctor had to take extra time on their own to learn biology because some misguided or coerced teacher was spending time including every imaginable pseudoscience in their lesson plans.

    So, my southern friends, good luck. I respect your beliefs, and I respect your right to have a wonderful Sunday school class on Genesis. If fact, try the original Hebrew, or the English translation by Everett Fox; it’s quite interesting—especially in a religion class. In a biology class, it’s just odd.

    Sincerely,

    Peter A. Lipson, M.D.

  • Welcome ERV

    No time for blogging today but make sure to welcome ERV, on of my favorite bloggers, to the network.

    Welcome ERV!

  • If you ever get tired of sanity, Huffington Post is still there

    In this morning’s post, Mark mentions an article from the alternative medical universe that is the Huffington Post. One of the latest bits of idiocy to come out of HuffPo is from Barbara Fischkin. I have no idea who this person is, but her writing shows a few things: she is willing to go against scientific consensus without any evidence, and while the rest of the country sits agape at the anti-scientific pandering of all of our presidential candidates, she applauds their senseless bloviations.

    The candidates are all talking about it, but when Hillary Clinton said it, I cried. (So did I. –ed)
    “We will tackle everything from autism to Alzheimer’s, cancer to diabetes, and make a real difference,” she said, in her Pennsylvania primary victory speech. Later, looking at that one sentence in the light of day, I understood why it stopped me in my tracks. Hillary Clinton put autism first on her list of dreaded diseases. First, even though it wasn’t in alphabetical order.

    Well, actually, it was roughly in alphabetical order.

    More below the fold…
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  • Huffington Post is a denialist website

    How else can you describe a site that regularly publishes David Kirby’s anti-vaccination denialism, Jennifer McCarthy’s insanity, and conspiracy theories from the like of Diedre Imus?

    The latest this weekend is the goalpost-moving from David Kirby, which based on the egregious misinterpretation of the Hannah Poling case, represents the new front of anti-vaccination denialists in their war on reason. In the never-ending quest to pin autism on vaccines no matter what the evidence, the anti-vaccine denialists now are trying to make autism a mitochondrial disorder in order to fit their latest imagined victory. Despite the obvious fact that the disorder in the Poling case was a pre-existing genetic dysfunction that was possibly aggravated by vaccines, Kirby has decided to add to the confusion by now suggesting that this was a “concession” by the government of a causative link between vaccines and autism.

    There is no evidence of a link. between autisms and vaccines.

    This post from Kirby is joined by this article from Barbara Fischkin which has the audacity to blame autism on thimerosal:

    These people were poisoned. One of the culprits is, no doubt, the mercury preservative that was put willy-nilly into so many vaccines.

    Let’s be clear. The thimerosal-autism link is one of the clearest examples of a failed hypothesis that I can think of. It was extensively studies, and roundly disproven by the fact that 6 years after it’s removal autism diagnoses continue to increase (A longer discussion for why this is). Even Kirby won’t support this nonsense, yet the HuffPo will gladly let other cranky celebrities and other morons write whatever the hell they want about science as if they have any idea what they are talking about.

    This is an example of something we here at denialism blog have been talking about lately. Liberalism is no protection from anti-scientific thinking. In fact, if there is a unifying theme of denialism, it is that any extreme of ideological thinking leads to the necessary denial of fact. When one considers the causes of denialist worldviews, one sees again and again some form of fundamentalist belief. Fundamentalist religion leads to the rejection of evolution. Free-market fundamentalists are the leading source of anti-global warming denialism. On the liberal side, a mixture of technophobia and neo-luddism leads to paranoid suspicions about everything from GM crops causing non-existent illnesses to fear of harmless radio technology such as wifi to the fear of vaccines and medicine innovations exemplified by the HuffPo cranks and the evidence-based medicine/HIV/AIDS denialists like Mike Adams and Gary Null.

    All overvalued ideology ultimately represents a threat to scientific or rational thinking. Science doesn’t respect political values or preconceived notions about how the world works. Liberals may side with global warming science because it fits with their preconceived paranoia of corporations and technology, and conservatives may love evidence-based medicine because it protects Dick Cheney from the Grim Reaper but it’s clear no matter what the ideology, whenever there is a conflict between science and politics there is always a constituency that favors rejection of fact to maintain a fixed belief.

    Medicine is no exception. Conservatives don’t generally object to medicine, but are happy to lie about contraception, abortion, embryonic stem cell science or the evil FDA regulators when it conflicts with their pro-life or fundamentalist free market agenda. Liberals don’t object to object to being put together after car accidents either, but their anti-corporate and anti-authority ideology leads them to dream up all sorts of paranoid conspiracy theories that fit with altie-woo and luddite denialism.

    I believe public policy should be informed by the evidence first, and ideology should always play second fiddle to what can be demonstrated by the facts. When that order is reversed you are playing a dangerous game. Huffington Post, by supporting this denialist claptrap is risking its reputation on writers who are little more than kooks. I think they should follow the model of Daily Kos. The scientific standards for what appears on the front page is consistently top-notch. The diaries, which are essentially a free-for-all, are monitored for the presence of 9/11 conspiracy nonsense and other kinds of embarrassing crankery which damages the ultimate goal of the website. I would hope that Huffington Post could learn from this and understand the importance of standards for inclusion of posts on their site. These kooks will bring them down, because, dammit, lot’s of us out here in the real world think science is important. I would also hope that contributors to Huffington Post who care about science will realize that Huffington Post shouldn’t get a pass just because they might happen to be right on global warming or evolution. These types of posts from pseudoscientific crackpots are an embarrassment, and the inclusion of these kooks undermines the legitimacy of the site as a whole. If there are people who care about making HuffPo sound like a source of legitimate opinion and analysis, they should take a stand, now, before it’s too late.

  • Why blog? Musings and open thread

    There’s been some chat around here regarding why people blog. I’ll leave out the entire matter of why people write in the first place—that topic is so well covered in undergrad, there’s no reason to try to add to an already voluminous literature.

    But why blog?
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  • Denialism Can Be Illegal!

    You’ve probably heard that Wesley Snipes received the maximum sentence for not paying his taxes–3 years based on 3 misdemeanor violations. His “advisors,” tax fraud denialists with crackpot legal theories received 10 for conspiring to defraud the government of tax revenue:

    Snipes’ co-defendants in the case,Lake County anti-tax guru Eddie Ray Kahn, 64, and tax preparer Douglas P. Rosile, 59, face up to 10 years in prison. Both were convicted of conspiracy and tax fraud for their work with American Rights Litigators and Guiding Light of God Ministries, two Lake County-based “tax-fraud” mills.

  • Now it's official–Gary Null, HIV Denialist and Crank

    Apparently, Gary is now a documentary filmmaker, and officially an HIV Denialist. What a pity. So many people like him. It’s a shame he has to go from being wrong to being wrong and dangerous.

    Check out this beauty from his website (edited for space):

    Documentary filmmaker (sic) and health expert Gary Null (sic-er), Ph.D.(sic trifecta!), features never before seen footage from around the world, especially in Africa, in his new film “AIDS, Inc.”. This is the first film on AIDS to bring together the most compelling arguments of dissident scientists, physicians and public health advocates.

    In “AIDS, Inc.”, Dr. Null shows how greed and corruption have prevented any real progress in fighting the epidemic and its underlying causes. The film challenges the notion that AIDS or HIV is an African monkey virus that is spread sexually and can be “treated” with harmful drugs. It considers the common underlying conditions of the epidemic, such as malnutrition, unclean water, poverty, illness such as TB, malaria and dysentery, and poor lifestyle choices.

    Help give a voice to over 4,000 dissident scientists, physicians and public health advocates, and redirect the war on AIDS. We offer letters which can be adapted and sent to your legislators. Please be sure to include your name and address on the letters.

    Vey is meir! Gevalt, gevalt! I mean, the coffee enemas were kind of funny, the hydrogen peroxide was just plain stupid, and the chelation therapy was kind of sad. This is downright dangerous.

    In “AIDS, Inc. Dr. (sic) Null shows how greed and corruption have prevented any real progress in fighting the epidemic and its underlying causes. The film challenges the notion that AIDS or HIV is an African monkey virus that is spread sexually and can be “treated” with harmful drugs.

    HIV Denialism is a huge topic, which has been addressed at my old place a few times, and here quite often.

    This should really be the final straw in the discrediting of Null. Any PBS station that still uses his infomercials during their pledge drives should stop. If they don’t, viewers should consider sending their money to some other worthy cause, and tell the station why.

  • World Malaria Day

    buttonThe World Health Organization has declared today World Malaria Day. Why “World Malaria Day”?

    World Malaria Day is an opportunity for malaria-free countries to learn about the devastating consequences of the disease and for new donors to join a global partnership against malaria.

    World-wide there are about a million deaths yearly from malaria, mostly in young children. Here in the States, we almost never see malaria. That wasn’t always true. When Franklin Roosevelt founded the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933, malaria affected about 30% of the population in the TVA region. With the use of pesticides and drainage of wetlands, malaria was effectively eliminated in the U.S. by 1951. DDT was used extensively—it was sprayed judiciously, on the interior walls of rural houses, and not-so judiciously on breeding grounds. DDT can be a very effective tool to combat malaria. When malarial mosquitoes bite, they then rest on the interior wall of the victim’s house. It takes only a small amount of DDT on the wall to kill these mosquitoes. (DDT later became an environmental disaster when it was used in a non-judicious fashion on crops. For more on the interesting and controversial topic of malaria and DDT, see this).

    A very effective and affordable tool to prevent and control malaria is the insecticide-treated bed net. These nets have actually been shown to decrease all-cause mortality where they have been studied.

    Malaria is nasty. Healthy adults who contract it often suffer terrible relapsing fevers. But many victims, especially children and pregnant women, suffer much more severe disease, including cerebral malaria, severe hemolytic anemia, liver and kidney failure, and death.

    Several years ago, I admitted a businessman to the hospital. He was terribly ill—fevers, jaundice, kidney failure, low blood pressure. He reported having traveled to West Africa on business, and he did not take malarial prophylaxis. He had classic “blackwater fever“. It took all the resources of a modern American intensive care unit to pull him through, and just barely. Imagine the same patient thousands of times over in Africa.

    World Malaria Day is an opportunity for those of us in the malaria-free world to learn about how to help stop one of the worlds largest killers of children. Link it, blog it, make some noise.

  • GM foods cause delusions

    Here at denialism blog, we’ve written a bit about so-called Morgellons syndrome. Every once in a while, when I tire of sanity, I scan the news for more Morgellons madness, and when it comes to madness, Mike Adams never disappoints.

    In his latest foray into paranoid idiocy, he tries to link this non-existent illness to genetically modified (GM) foods. And what abuses of logic does he use to create this connection?

    He starts with the classic “begging the question“. The entire first section of his article simply assumes that Morgellons exists as some sort of unique pathology. On what does he base his assumption? On two things: anecdotal reports, and the fact that it is being studied by the CDC (at the urging of “interest groups”). The CDC study has not been completed, and there is still no reason to think that Morgellons is anything other than delusions of parasitosis in a shiny new polyester suit. That doesn’t stop him from creating broad, unsupported connections.

    He quotes a noted fake expert, Randy Wymore, who has spent a great deal of time studying Morgellons—at least, he says he has. He hasn’t really published anything to support his claims. Then he quotes many un-notable people who have supposedly analyzed Morgellons “fibers”—-this has never been done systematically and published. All that exists is anecdotal reports of individual “researchers”. According to some of these folks, they have found Agrobacterium DNA in these fibers.

    And then he stops.

    Because I’m not a paranoid conspiracy theorist, I had to look this up. Apparently, Agrobacterium is a favorite bugaboo of the wackier wing of the anti-GM food movement.

    This is a pretty classic piece. In trying to link two somewhat wacky ideas, a crank uses smoke and mirrors to distract from the fact that he has no logical argument. But the reason to look for logical fallacies in an argument is not to immediately invalidate an idea—it is to evaluate whether or not a particular argument is prima facie invalid. Might there be a link between this new form of delusional parasitosis and GM foods? Sure, I suppose it’s not beyond the realm of the possible. The point is that his reasoning does not support his assertion.

    When reading about assertions that seem a little strange, it pays to parse the argument for logical fallacies and denialist tactics.

    That is, if you are interested in the truth.